Soulive
The NYC jazz-funk musicians return with a new singer, label and album

Courtesy of Smash

Since we last saw brothers Alan (drums) and Neal (keys) Evans and Eric Krasno (guitar) burn up the stage at Fuji Rock Festival ’05, the trio have been through some major changes. Ending their contract with venerable jazz label Blue Note, Soulive joined newly relaunched legendary soul imprint Stax for this year’s No Place Like Soul. On the album, they also worked extensively with Boston singer Toussaint, whom they recently invited to come on board as lead vocalist. Metropolis reached Krasno by email at his home in Brooklyn.

Why did you move to Concord/Stax?
When we signed to Concord before Breakout, they had mentioned that they were in the process of relaunching Stax. We had completed our deal with Blue Note and it seemed like the right fit.

Blue Note and Stax have rich but different histories…
It’s a huge honor to be on Stax; to be mentioned and associated with artists who have influenced us and who we have been fans of for many years has been very cool. And the same was true when we were on Blue Note. We come from a wide range of influences, both jazz and soul.

How has adding permanent vocalist Toussaint changed the dynamics of the band and your songwriting?
Well, everyone is involved in writing. Sometimes, someone will bring the beginning of a tune and we’ll finish it together. Other times, one of us will bring a tune that’s almost done and we’ll record it. On this record we had a bunch of songs that lent themselves to vocals. I wrote some of the words, Alan others—and Toussaint wrote a bunch as well.

How did you meet Toussaint, what made you feel that he is right for Soulive, and how does his Rasta faith affect the band?
We’ve known Toussaint for a while. One day Al invited him to write some material together and we asked him to do a couple of shows with us last year. Then when we were making the record, he came to the studio and everything just felt right. We all have our own beliefs, so I don’t think Tous’ beliefs affect us one way or another.

I’ve only seen you as a trio. What can I expect from the new live show?
The live show is still very high-energy. Tous does a lot of the show with us, but we still do a few instrumental tracks and we still have room to explore during the vocal tracks.

Soul is now four decades old. How do you go about interpreting classic styles in a new way for a new generation?
Well, we wrote these songs without necessarily thinking about sounding old or classic. They just kind of fit into that style. I guess it could be our influences coming out, but we just went about writing the songs that we were feeling.

With the founding fathers dying off, do you feel a sense of responsibility as guardians of a heritage?
I’m not sure we are really guardians per se, but if we turn people on to different types of music, be it new or old, then that is a good thing!

Tell me about some of your personal encounters with the greats.
We played at the Stax 50th anniversary celebration in Memphis in June. All the old Stax artists were there: Isaac Hayes, Booker T & the MGs, Mavis Staples, William Bell and others. It was amazing to perform alongside them. That was the music we grew up on!

What is right and wrong with the contemporary music scene as you see it?
Well, obviously it is harder to sell records in the traditional sense, but there are still great artists out there: Van Hunt, Talib Kweli [see CDs, page 15] and many others. We just need to look at new ways of thinking about records. We make records of some of our shows and post them online for sale, and we have these data storage wristbands that we are just about to start selling at shows, where you buy the music from the show right as the show is letting out!

Club Quattro, Oct 9-10. See concert listings (popular) for details.

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